This invention relates in general to communications systems, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for adding communication endpoints to a communication system using multiple line appearances.
According to well known traditional communication devices such as PBXs, a communication line must be provided from each communication endpoint (e.g. telephone set, wireless phone, etc.) to the communication device. More recently, Gateways have been used to add new communications endpoints to a communications device using the H.323 communications protocol. H.323 is an emerging standard for multi-media communication. This standard governs communications between terminals and other entities over a packet switched network. As will be understood by a person of ordinary skill in the art, a Gateway is an H.323 device for transparently reflecting the characteristics of a LAN endpoint to an SCN (Switched Circuit Network) endpoint, and vice versa.
Notwithstanding the advantages of utilizing H.323 communication between endpoints, there remains a requirement to provide a communication line from the Gateway to the communication device for each new endpoint added to the system. This results in additional cost in terms of equipment and cabling.
According to the present invention, a method and apparatus are provided for monitoring calls to an existing communication endpoint-of a line, answering the calls and forwarding the calls to an appropriate one of multiple devices connected to a single communication port on the system by using multiple line appearances.